70 arrests in one week as police crack down on cycle theft across Greater London

More than 70 arrests were made last week as a result of increased activity as part of Project Cycle Ops, a partnership between Transport for London, the police and cycling groups to tackle cycle theft from public places.

Officers from the TfL-funded Metropolitan Police Service Safer Transport Command, British Transport Police and City of London Police used a range of tactics to arrest thieves.

In total, more than 50 bikes were seized, which officers are now trying to identify whether they are stolen and find their rightful owners.

11 of the bikes seized were Bromptons, recovered after a search at an address in Harrow, following intelligence into the sale of stolen bikes online.

So far, 13 bikes, including four of these have been identified as being stolen and will be returned to their owners.

In the last week, more than 1400 cyclists have had their bike security marked and registered on bikeregister.com for free using BikeRegister, the police's preferred cycle registration database and the main search tool used by the police to reunite stolen bikes to their owner.

Registering details of your bike helps the police and retailers identify and verify the legitimate owner of bikes that have been stolen or are being resold. Over 48,000 bikes have been marked and registered onto BikeRegister by the police since June 2010.

A police spokesperson said, "While operations like these send a clear message that bike theft isn't tolerated in the Capital, all cyclists are urged to register their bikes online for free to help us identify and recover them if stolen or resold."

Replies

Cycle thefts are up again this year in Kingston despite 'efforts' by the authorities to turn the tide. Want to know how many bikes have been stolen in your borough (or any borough?) You can find out here: http://maps.met.police.uk/tables.htm I believe it's column 'Y' which has the Cycle thefts. I love an Excel spreadsheet!

BTW, two bobbies were cycling down my street the other night without any lights on their bikes. "Oh, they must've fallen off" they said. Yeah, lights fall off my bike all the time. <rolls eyes> Shouldn't they be setting some sort of example?

The idea of a police crackdown on cycle theft is ludicrous. This story is a blatant plant by police PR. Stolen bikes are a major criminal industry in London and if the police gave it any kind of priority, they could easily catch most of the criminals who make a living from it. Instead they prefer to devote their resources to harassing cyclists for insignificant traffic infringements.